Bush’s Bloody Strategy for Victory (Mathew Rothschild)

1) Pick up the tempo and quantity of the air bombing of civilians

2) Increase use of the “Salvadore Option” (kidnapping and death squads)

Even former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has decried these human rights abuses. “People are doing the same as Saddam’s time and worse,” he told the London Observer.

“We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated. A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations.”

Cheney and Rumsfeld have been trumpeting the Salvador option for some time now.

During the 2004 Vice Presidential debate, Dick Cheney said, “Twenty years ago, we had a similar situation in El Salvador. . . . And today, El Salvador is a whale of a lot better.”

Donald Rumsfeld said virtually the same thing right after the election. “The Iraqi people can find much to admire in El Salvador’s recent history,” Rumsfeld said in San Salvador on November 11, 2004.

Cheney and Rumsfeld implicitly were putting their seal of approval on the tens of thousands of civilians the Salvadoran death squads tortured and murdered.

And again:

First, the air war is expanding without media or Congressional discussion.

A Pentagon press release in late 2004 declared that the 3rd Marine Aircraft wing alone had dropped five hundred thousand tons of “high-tech steel on target”, and that the tonnage would grow “much higher.” [Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 05].

Second, it is clear that the US covert operations include a dirty war modeled on a revived Phoenix program using Iraqi Shiite [Badr] militias who conduct assassinations, operate secret prisons, and terrorize Sunni neighborhoods. Hundreds of bodies are turning up, shot in the head, “burned with acid and drilled with holes by electric drills.” Sunnis are rightly asking how the death squads have obtained police uniforms, police cars, and license to drive after curfews. [see LA Times, NY Times Nov. 29, 05]. These operations probably are the real reason for stationing John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq. Negroponte has a long history of association with covert ops, particularly with the Honduran death squad known as unit 301 when he was ambassador to that country.

Must Reads:

Seymour Hersch, UP IN THE AIR: Where is the Iraq war headed next? - The New Yorker, Annals of National Security

Interview on Democracy Now